This is the official Blog for Tony Horton, creator of Power 90, Power Half Hour and P90X.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

A Simple Tip to Improve Lower Back & Core Strength

If you experience stiffness and tightness in your lower back on a regular basis, for no apparent reason – adopting a simple habit could help ease that by improving your lower back and core strength:

Whenever you walk, focus on your ab and glut muscles and keep them strong. You don’t have to put a lot of energy into this and constantly flex your behind and abdominal areas while you go about your business; the key is to consciously use your glueteal and abdominal muscles whenever you stand, walk, jog, and run.

If you do this correctly, your gait will feel strong and purposeful, and you should be more aware of the muscles that surround your hip and lower back areas.

What makes this habit helpful for people who experience chronic, intermittent lower back pain? It lightens the load on your joints. Your ligaments wrap tightly against the joints in your pelvis and lower back and your muscles are right over them. The main purpose of the ligaments is to keep your joints stable, preventing dislocations and keeping your muscles strong eases the tension on the ligaments.

Over time, the muscles and ligaments that surround your lower back and pelvic regions can become weak. As your muscles become weak, your ligaments have to work even harder to keep your joints stable. Since muscles and ligaments tend to get weak together, your ligaments under extra stress can become injured, typically producing intermittent joint problems. Injury leads to pain and inflammation, which leads to less physical activity, which produces further weakening of the muscles and ligaments. See how that works?

Injured ligaments can heal and strengthen over time, but in some cases, the involved joints may never fully recover.

So, if you’ve recently started your program and you’re having a hard time with lower back pain, don’t let it stop you. Training your muscles to be active and strong while you go about your daily activities can be an extremely effective way of strengthening your lower back and core – and help you bring it harder, sooner. Your muscles have much greater capacity to be strengthened and reconditioned than your ligaments do, so by consciously using your abdominal and gluteal muscles every time you stand, walk, jog, or run, you provide significant support to your lower back and pelvic regions and keep your joints happy.

When it comes to bending your trunk forward and backward, your abdominal and lower back muscles perform opposite actions; your abdominal muscles flex (curl forward) your trunk, while your lower back muscles extend (bend back) your trunk. Your nervous system is designed to allow both your abs and lower back muscles to perform with the least amount of opposing strain. This nervous system mechanism is called reciprocal inhibition.

When you keep your abs strong while you walk, your nervous system tells the muscles of your lower back to relax to some degree. And when you keep your gluts strong as you walk, your hip flexors receive a steady signal from your nervous system to relax and lengthen.

Having strong abs, strong gluts, and relaxed and lengthened lower back muscles and hip flexors are the four main requirements for a strong and healthy lower back and core.

So, there you have it. Just be conscious of your ab and glut muscles when you’re moving around, going about your business and you’ll strengthen your lower back and core, which will help you feel better, fight aches and pains, and be able to bring even harder. Simple. Try it.

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Reciprocal inhibition--that's the kind of inhibition you gotta love!-;) Seriously, I believe that in order to have strong and flexible limbs, we must first obtain a strong and flexible core. For instance, if you look at a tree, the limbs grow out from the trunk first, not the other way around. So, the same follows for all of us, I would presume.

I do a heck of a lot walking and schlepping through this big, bad town, and for example, when I'm carrying two bags of groceries in each hand for ten blocks, I try to always flex my gluts and gut simultaneously, in order to keep that S-curve in the spine going. In fact, I remember when you taught us the right technique at the last fitness camp, thank you very much-:)

After so many rounds of P90, PHH, P90X, plus, and now One on One, I personally have learned to keep my core and butt flexed naturally, without even thinking about it. What a great after-effect, right?! It's kinda like proper pushup form, no lifting the butt or back sway...the same with walking and sitting. Form fits function, and without proper form, disfunction and injury will follow.

Keep it real, bro. And I just have to say that I'm really feeling the 30-15 workout, what a lovely monster that is! Thanks again.

I just wanted to say thank you, Tony. I've always been into fitness (my very first job was doing laundry at a health club as a kid, it included a free membership-I got hooked young). About a year and a half ago though, I suffered a very serious back injury. I had a couple of severely herniated discs. I was told this was the result of degenerative disc disease.

I have spent a lot of time doing body and rehabilitative work, gaining strength again very slowly. I was living in constant pain, and was told my life would never be the same again; I believed it. At the time of the injury it was so bad that I required assistance doing my laundry.

A coworker introduced me to P90X, and I'm in my fourth week now. The difference, to me, is simply magical. I am pain free. Pain free! That alone would be enough. At this point the fact that I'm also in the best shape of my entire life at 33 is just icing on the cake. I never expected this. In one of the videos you refer to the program as a gift, and it has certainly been that for me. Thank you so much.

Actually, since I've been doing P90x, I've noticed my old "chronic lower back pain" has gone away. Turns out it was more of a "chronic tubby gut putting strain on my lower back" pain.

Since we're on the subject of muscle pain, though, I do have kind of a related question. This summer I played softball, and week after week I seemed to strain my upper quad as I started to sprint to 1st. I did about 10 minutes of stretching before each game, but apparently I was doing the wrong kind of stretching. Any suggestions (from anyone really, not just Tony)on what the heck was causing this injury and how to avoid in in the future?

Jim, perhaps you should do more ballistic stretches rather than static. Like Tony always says in his P90X videos "Think of a swimmer about to hit the pool, or a boxer about to enter the ring" they're doing ballistic stretches to get ready to "bring it" in their fields. Maybe give that a shot?

Love your blog, I check it out all the time. Thanks for keeping it so active and relevant.

I wanted to give you some love for the P90x workouts. Yeah, I'm late, the thing's been out for at least a few years. I'm wondering, "WHERE WAS I WHEN THIS CAME OUT??!" "WHY DIDN'T I KNOW ABOUT THIS SOONER!" I guess because I was a Tae Bo girl, which is great and it helped me flip that switch to loving good health and fitness, helped me embrace the struggle to change and improve, as well as improving my mental fitness. But then I ended up in a fitness plateau.

Enter the weight training...I own a Bowflex but hadn't used it in quite a while and couldn't seem to get into the groove of weight training. But I think what I needed was the correct information and knowledge, and you gave me that! So thanks!! Thanks so much for this incredible program. I'm currently in week 8 of the program. It's pulled me out of the fitness plateau that I was in and I am positively gleeful at the (good) sore muscles and the changes I feel. I'm smiling out loud, if that's possible.

I'm big on how it feels to be healthy and fit, love the feeling, and I definitely try to focus on that, rather than on the bikini picture. I love your focus on health and longevity rather than the outward appearance as much. I love your energy and your positive attitude.

Tony, I have been active all my life. I was a professional dancer/choreographer, professional water skier, professional stunt performer and coach and professional circus artist on the Spanish Web (yes, I am an overachiever). Fitness has ALWAYS been my life. Now I even own a gym and am a trainer. After I had my son I became more sedentary because I was involved strictly in the TV industry producing indie TV series. When I bought my gym I had gotten back into decent shape along with the assistance of my friend,guru and business partner - she is a figure competitor and trainer. I lost the 16 lbs I had gained and looked and felt really good. To the point, I wanted to take my body and life to the NEXT level so when I saw P90X I knew I had hit upon it! After just 2 weeks I am leaner, more ripped, have more energy, sleep better and have an even more renewed confidence. I am a walking, talking example of yours and MY theories. My clients have noticed the difference as have my friends and family. Now I get stopped in gyms when I travel for advice...I am my best advertising! Thanks Tony keep up the good work and keep coming up with new and better ways to keep the world fit, so I can steal them! :) Kaz Akers - www.allthatkaz.com

I was diagnosed with scoliosis back in the spring. I took a short time off from working out as I had something slip in my neck and had to start chiropractic care. That's when I saw the nasty x-rays. After chiro care for a while and hitting P90X I am overcoming and feeling great. Thanks for the core advise. My x-rays are changing even though it has been said to be I would be curved the rest of my life. I believe with exercise and prayer anything is possible. It's the only body I got and I want to "BRING IT." Thanks again, Tony!

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